When Raffi Holzer isn't working
as a general manager at FranchiseHelp, he's managing
his own burgeoning enterprise: reversible sunglasses.

Plain on one side and patterned
on the other, Peeq
sunglasses are built with a reversible hinge that allows them to
be worn either way.

The idea originated in
Holzer's product-design class at the University of
Pennsylvania as part of an assignment to rethink an everyday
design. He saw a pair of plain black sunglasses on his desk,
and then spotted someone across the room wearing a bright
electric-blue pair.

"I'm a mechanical guy and I'm
thinking, 'There's got to be a way to flip them around and have
the design on either side,'" the 27-year-old told INSIDER.
"I've seen glasses that have designs on either side. Why can't
you have a hinge that just allows you to wear them both
ways?"

He started by cutting up 3-D
movie glasses and pasting them back together, and then eventually
designed a reversible hinge. He put a provisional patent on the
mechanism, but left the idea alone for a year and a
half until his girlfriend — now his wife — and her family
encouraged him to pursue it.

"I showed my now father-in-law
the idea, and he was like, 'You have to patent this,'" Holzer
said. "I was like, 'If there's really interest, maybe I should
actually follow through and start doing something about
this.'"

The glasses may look effortlessly
sleek now, but it took some time to get them right.

"There were a huge number of
challenges in terms of trying to get a pair of glasses that would
be reversible and also fit like a normal pair of glasses would,"
he said. "I think we've basically gotten there, and the next step
is really just getting them into production."

Holzer hopes that Peeq's versatile frames will allow
wearers to express different facets of themselves.

"I think every person has at
least two sides to them, and why not have an accessory that can
be expressive of both of those?" he said. "There are situations
in which you want to be more conservative and there are
situations in which you want to go wild, and this pair of glasses
allows you to do both of those through one accessory."

The sunglasses will retail for
around $60, with a forthcoming Indiegogo campaign to jump-start
development.

"This is a learning process for
me, certainly, and it's hopefully a collaborative and artistic
process, as well as a business enterprise," he said.